America's Best Idea?
/By Sam Baker, produced by Out There Podcast
Released on March 3, 2022
Welcome to Out There Podcast. Our stories are written for the ear, so for those able, we recommend listening while reading along. Transcripts may contain minor errors; please check the audio before quoting.
(Sound of breeze blowing)
JESSICA TAYLOR: This is Jessica Taylor, and I’m the advertising manager at Out There Podcast, and I am actually in the middle of the Grand Canyon right now. So I’m right above the Colorado River. And I’ve opened up my PeakVisor app.
WILLOW BELDEN: PeakVisor is one of our sponsors for this season. Their app helps you figure out what you’re looking at when you’re out on adventures.
Let’s say you’re in a national park, and you see a mountain in the distance, and you want to know what it is. PeakVisor will tell you.
JESSICA: I can see down where Phantom Ranch is, where I’m going to be tomorrow. Then on the opposite side, I see Bright Angel Point. That’s where we’re ending in three days.
WILLOW: PeakVisor also has intricate 3D maps, which are great for planning your trips. The maps are so detailed you can see down to individual trees.
If you’d like to have your own personal mountain guide, check out PeakVisor in the app store. You just might love it.
(Out There theme music begins to play)
Hi, I’m Willow Belden, and you’re listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.
This season, we’re exploring the theme “Things I Thought I Knew.” Each episode we’re sharing a story about an outdoor experience that changed someone’s understanding.
But before we get to that, I have a quick reminder. Tomorrow is the last day to become an Out There patron if you’d like to come to our virtual Happy Hour.
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(theme music ends)
National Parks are often referred to as America’s best idea. And there’s a lot to love about them. But they also have a complicated history — a history that involves displacement of indigenous people. A history of broken promises. A history of genocide.
And that history is not over. The way we preserve wild spaces today often comes at the expense of Native Americans and Alaska Natives.
I’ll admit, thinking about this always makes me…uncomfortable. I love national parks. I love that they’re pristine. I love that you can’t build condos there, and that cars can only drive in prescribed places, and that there are rules that protect the plants and animals. But I’m not ok with how these parks came to be.
So where does this leave us? Is there a way to right the wrongs of the past? Can we protect our wild spaces in a way that is also socially just? Is there a way to create a better future, one park at a time?
This episode comes to us from an environmental journalist who's struggled for a long time with the paternalism of environmental movements in the US. But she sees a way forward that offers a lot of hope. She takes us from a young national park in Germany to Denali in Alaska, and explores how we can start taking steps to right the wrongs of our past.
Sam Baker has this story. And just as a heads up, there is some adult language in this episode.
SAM BAKER: I've been bothered for a long time with how white and privileged environmental movements in the U.S. have been, historically. I especially think about this as a white, privileged person myself.
(soft music begins)
This tension is perhaps best articulated in the history of America's National Parks.
MARK DAVID SPENCE: The creation of parks were either concurrent with, or occurred very soon after, the United States had proven victorious in a military conflict with native peoples.
SAM: That's environmental historian Mark David Spence. He's Métis, which is a group with native and European ancestry, and he's studied the national parks for over two decades.
MARK: Conflicts end with a treaty, and the treaty basically forces movement of native peoples — and I'm talking about the American West — to sort of bounded reservations.
SAM: In other words, in order to 'protect' the places that became parks, white people evicted those who lived there.
(music fades out)
Mark is the author of a book about the founding of our national parks called Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. Published back in 1999, it was part of a historical reawakening about what had to happen to make U.S. national parks possible.
I first encountered Mark's work years ago when I was studying environmental history in college. But I first got to meet him – well, virtually anyway – when I interviewed him last year for the environmental radio show I host.
(airy music begins)
He talked about the history of U.S. national parks, and the problems with white ideas of wilderness. He said wilderness is a mythical notion — an idea of untouched land. But in fact, native peoples have been changing and shaping that land for centuries.
But one part of the interview really surprised me.
He said: “The most important word in National Parks is ‘national.’” He gave the examples of a Dutch national park featuring a Van Gogh museum, and how in China inscriptions of famous Chinese poems were displayed throughout the park. These countries were showcasing their national heritage in the landscape. Their national identity was reflected in what they chose to protect, and how they chose to share it.
(music fades out)
The things we try to erase can say just as much about us. In the U.S., we promote this idea that the wilderness is untouched. And we perpetuate this myth by erasing the history of the native peoples who lived on this land long before white people arrived.
(The Star-Spangled Banner begins to play)
It may be easy to think of national parks as being all about natural splendor. Wilderness. Wildlife. That’s if we think about it at all. A lot of us probably assume that the focus of a national park is the park.
But Mark’s words — this idea of national parks being symbols of the nation that establishes them, really stuck with me. I couldn't get it out of my mind. If national parks are 'America's Best Idea,' and there are deep, painful injustices embedded in their creation, what does that say about America?
(music fades out and the sound of footsteps on a trail begins)
I'm walking in Eifel National Park. It’s right on my doorstep on the western edge of Germany, where I live now. It's a small park, just 110 square kilometers. That's 100 times smaller than Yellowstone.
I’ve come here because the people in charge of Eifel are using the national park to help right historical wrongs. And because I’m curious if we can use some of their lessons in the U.S.
(footsteps fade out)
As someone who's from the U.S., I must admit, nothing in central Europe ever feels very 'wilderness-y' to me. You're never that far from a road, or the comforts of modern life. Oftentimes, even the campsites feel a bit contrived. I had a somewhat ridiculous argument last year with my boyfriend when we were camping in the Netherlands, about whether facilities where you could blow dry your hair are really roughing it.
But Eifel National Park is really quite lovely, with its vast forests of beech trees and rolling hills looking over deep valleys. It's also pretty new, established in 2004, as park ranger Nico Johannes tells me. It's funny to have such a young national park, when everything else in Europe feels so old.
Nico says they're still giving themselves some time to fully grow into being a national park.
NICO JOHANNES: Yeah, we have 30 years to become, you could say a 'real national park.' We are a real national park, but then the developing time is over and then nature's on its own. We have a lot of work to do, so it's interesting to see how the nature develops, and we can see it everywhere we go, because it's in constant change.
SAM: I've met Nico, along with historian Katharina Wonnemann, here at the park's headquarters – called Vogelsang, which means bird song. We have a beautiful view from high up, looking out over a dammed river and tall, forested hills.
NICO: We're looking at the core zone of the national park. Yeah, on the other side, we see parts of formerly restricted military area. There was a military camp training site here.
SAM: The facilities where we're standing on this windy, drizzly day, were a former Nazi training center.
KATHARINA WONNEMANN: These were the buildings where the people who came here in Nazi period learned something about the racist and anti-semitic ideology of the national socialism.
(parade music begins to play)
The Nazi leaders established this idea of these schooling centers, or training centers, shortly after Hitler's rise to power in 1933. And for young men, it was the vision of a great career that they were promised here.
(music fades out)
SAM: In these stone buildings, meant to represent a powerful regime's control, future Nazi leaders and officials were educated from 1936 to1939. During the war, the buildings were used as a hospital, and later boys as young as 12 came here to be part of an elite Nazi school literally called Adolf Hitler School.
In 1944, the grounds were abandoned. They were then used by the U.S. army, followed by the British army, and then Belgian troops, all the way up until 2005.
At that point, a difficult question was raised – what to do with this place?
(soft piano music begins to play)
After discussions in favor and against maintaining Vogelsang, it was decided it'd be turned into a space where German and international tourists could reckon with the wrongs of the past. And so, work began to transform Vogelsang into part of the newly founded National Park, eventually housing its headquarters. It was reopened as part of an intentional effort to build a more tolerant world.
Katharina points out how they've decided to restore the property, in order to confront its Nazi past. Rather than restoring the site as it would have been during Nazi rule, architects added modern elements like bright green, geometric window frames to bring this space out of the past and into the present.
KATHARINA: What I quite like with these green parts here in the buildings is that they destroy the former view of the so-called Ordensburg Vogelsang. It doesn't look like a castle anymore, but it has these modern parts in it.
SAM: Katharina shows me another spot, where there's a dramatic statue of a muscley man on the move with a torch in his hand. To his right is an inscription. It’s illegible now, as both he and the words have been shot many times, likely by Allied forces doing a bit of field training after the war.
Instead of restoring the statue and its Nazi message, missing pieces have been replaced with plain white stones. And trees once chopped down to display the statue, have been allowed to grow back, obscuring it.
(sounds of walking feet as music fades out)
When we're back in the visitor's center, I ask Katharina if even with these specific renovations and a historical museum exhibit, if they were worried about neo-Nazis coming to this site.
KATHARINA: It was one of the fears, but we don't have to deal with many neo-Nazi groups or groups of the far right. It's quite calm. But there are some groups that come here that take photos. It's quite difficult to deal with, so we have to yeah, make clear that this is a place where we deal with this history in a reflective and also critical way.
SAM: Rather than ignoring history, it was decided that it needed to be talked about, to be dealt with. And that's what they do now — educating visitors and school groups about how average people at that time became Nazis, got swept up in this hateful movement.
We go into one of the barracks. It has words written in French on the walls, leftover from Belgian forces. In the center of the room is a circle of chairs, used by school groups to engage in discussion.
KATHARINA: Our main topic here at this place is to talk about the young men who came here. What did their life look like? And how did they became perpetrators during World War II? And that's questions that are not easy to answer, but we can discuss this, and also always the questions that tangle our present. What kind of mechanisms do we see in this racist and anti-Semitic ideology? And do they still work today, maybe?
SAM: Back in the museum, Katharina shows me a black and white photograph of some of the men who walked these grounds, less than a century ago.
KATHARINA: I think it's quite interesting to look at the entrance of the exhibition, because it starts with a big photograph, a historical photograph, of these so-called Ordensjunge — the young men who came here during the 1930s.
This photograph is quite irritating for visitors here because it's quite big, and the persons, they look calm. They look like they're having a break. And only the uniforms and the swastikas tell us that these people are Nazis, so we look them in the eyes, as you can say.
SAM: Looking these men in the eyes through the lens of history, I get a chill. Both because they were likely murderers, and also, maybe even more so, because they were ordinary people, just like us looking back at them. Katharina sees this as one of the most important parts of the site — the reflection visitors and students have — asking ourselves, what would I have done at this time? Might I have acted the same if I were educated in this way?
(quiet music begins)
Living in Germany has given me a greater appreciation for this type of reflection. By no means is this country perfect, or even free of Nazis for that matter, but it is trying to be better. And it's doing this work in one of its national parks — a space that symbolizes another German trait I've come to admire, their love of nature and the time they set aside to get out and enjoy it.
In this space that was once meant to be a beacon of Nazi ideology, the nation now grapples with its history. Amid complicated sights of severe buildings set against a beautiful landscape, they conserve the countryside and remember its history.
This site also symbolizes one other thing. Various nonprofits use the buildings here. And one of them happens to help resettle refugees. It’s even used barracks built by the Belgian army to house refugees when they first get to Germany, before getting resettled more permanently.
And in this, I see something that I've heard Germans voice to me, something they feel they can finally be proud of — a new reputation as a more welcoming country.
(music fades out)
WILLOW: Hey, it’s Willow. We’ll hear the rest of the story in a moment. But first…
MORGAN SPRINGER: I think it’s common to think of humans as apart from nature. But we are a part of nature, and there is a way that we can interact where we do less harm — maybe do no harm — and actually can thrive together with the environment.
WILLOW: That’s Morgan Springer. She’s the co-host of a new podcast series called [Un]Natural Selection.It’s about how humans have both helped, and hurt, the environment.
MORGAN: The series is kind of a toolkit for listeners, so that we can evaluate how we operate in the environment, in the natural world, and figure out how we can really do better.
WILLOW: [Un]Natural Selection is one of our sponsors for this episode. It’s a new season of Points North. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, or at pointsnorthradio.org.
Support for Out There also comes from Powder7.
Powder7 is a full-service ski shop and online retailer based in Golden, Colorado. They have a classic ski shop vibe with the convenience, fast shipping, and great prices of a leading online retailer.
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Shop online at Powder7.com, or feel free to call or email them and chat with their team of experts. That’s Powder, the number 7, dot com.
And now, back to the story.
SAM: Hearing how the Germans at Vogelsang were working to acknowledge their past, while also charting a new future within a National Park, I realized I knew a park like this in the US. In fact, I'd been to it when I lived in Alaska. Denali.
(whimsical music begins to play)
Now, if you're not from the U.S. or maybe even if you're not from Alaska, you likely learned in grade-school geography that the tallest mountain in North America — the centerpiece of this national park — was called Mt. McKinley.
But that wasn’t its original name. This mountain was known as Denali. It's a name that was stripped away when the park was founded in 1917.
Nearly a century later, ahead of a presidential visit to Alaska by Barack Obama, Secretary of the Interior at the time, Sally Jewel, officially reinstated the name Denali on the federal level.
The change was widely hailed by Alaskans as a positive, overdue announcement, falling in line with what the state had already done in 1980. It honored a native name for the mountain, instead of a President who'd never stepped foot in Alaska.
Having learned about the troubling history of U.S. national parks, I thought to myself, 'Yes, this is a great step towards righting the wrongs of the past, an easy win.’
But is a name change enough?
(music fades out)
KIANA CARLSON: I'm Kiana Carlson. I was born and raised in Cantwell, Alaska. I work at Denali National Park and Preserve in the summers in the Cultural Resources Department, studying history and archaeology, and working in the museum. And I'm Ahtna Athabaskan, and grew up traditionally here in the middle of Alaska, and continue to live pretty traditionally.
SAM: Kiana grew up two miles away from Denali National Park. As a kid, she hiked and went on school field trips there.
I expected that Kiana would've welcomed changing the mountain's name back to Denali.
But she told me, it doesn’t really mean much for her family.
KIANA: There's a quote by my great, great grandmother. She was mad at people telling her to call it Denali because that's the native name. And she was like, “That's not my native name. That's not what we call it. Don't force me to call it something you think that's what we call it, even though that's not what we call it.”
SAM: There are five Alaska Native groups that use the land that now makes up Denali National Park and Preserve — Ahtna, Dena’ina or Deena eena, Tanana, Koyukon, and Upper Kuskokwim. And naturally, they all have words in their own languages for the mountain, though they all translate to “big mountain” or “the tall one.”
In Ahtna...
KIANA: Oh, gosh, it's always so hard to say… I'm going to try my best. This is not super correct, and I know my elders would laugh at me, but…
(Kiana chuckles)
They'd be proud that I'm at least trying. Dghelaay Ce'e, which literally translates to “big mountain.”
(quiet music begins)
Now the biggest thing is, is it Denali or Denali? Denali itself it's a native word, but it's an anglicized version.
SAM: As I was working on this piece, going through news stories of Denali's name change, I realized that I couldn't actually find a single Alaska Native quoted in them. A blind spot on the part of, I assume, white journalists covering the story at the time.
Kiana made me realize that I was probably living in an environmentalist bubble at the time too, patting other liberals on the back for a largely symbolic gesture that didn't change much.
It's not that the name change was bad — there have been plenty of Alaska Natives who pushed for it. But it didn't fix the issues that still linger with the park. Issues that stem from white concepts of wilderness, which often get in the way of native peoples' connections to the land.
(music fades out)
Mark David Spence explains this tension well. He says a lot of white people see themselves as separate from nature, and their interactions with the natural world often involve conquering it.
I asked Mark what the establishment of national parks says about the history of white environmentalists in the U.S.
MARK: A lot. So when I was almost too young to remember, when I was a kid, when television signed off late at night, it basically played the Star-Spangled Banner…
(Star-Spangled Banner begins to play, with old-timey TV static)
And it was just a whole bunch…it was almost like a slideshow of national parks. This greatest idea, and this mighty nation, which is represented in the beauty, the grandeur of these sites, but also the sense of recreational struggle against nature that they provide. These are sort of, somehow or another, presumed to be strictly American traits.
But it also comes from the European concept of the sublime, which is, when I get way up into the high country, I'm away from everything. And I'm just looking at pure divinity as originally emanated at the process of creation.
In that, though, also comes a tremendous amount of ego. I climbed that. I hiked 20 miles in a day. There's a real sense of righteousness about outdoor recreation and particularly wilderness recreation.
(music ends)
So this sort of white recreationalism, that's the thing that rubs me most raw, because they equate their experiences — which you know, are emotionally and physically transcendent — to indigenous peoples’ connections to the land. They go, “I've got deep connections to these places.”
SAM: In reality, Mark says, these kind of white recreational experiences are very different from indigenous connections to the land.
MARK: We're interested in a future that will last as many thousands of years forward as the past that has brought us to where we are now. Native peoples aren't interested in saving parks for visitation, they're interested in saving their world, restoring what's been lost, and then perpetuating it into the future.
(quiet music begins)
For native peoples, park boundaries aren't the important thing. It's, its homeland stories, food resources, fasting sites — which is also referred to as a vision quest,
All this might sound a little theoretical, but for Kiana and her family, the issues are very concrete.
For example, when Denali National Park was created, white people decided that hunting didn’t fit with their vision of wilderness. So hunting was banned inside the park.
But Alaska Natives had hunted there for generations.
KIANA: All we want is to hunt and kill a moose, because we love moose meat. And it's beyond like us just being meat eaters. There's so many quotes from so many elders that like it's tied to our mental health, like it makes us happy. My brother lives in California, we send him moose meat, and I have a cousin that lives in Utah. She's vegetarian, but she comes up here, she eats moose meat, and she almost like cries because it's just, it's powerful eating food that we've eaten forever. Which is true to all cultures. There's no difference for us and moose meat and caribou meat, or sheep meat, or blueberries, or whatever it is. And we just want the rights to be able to access that.
(music fades out)
SAM: In 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, better known as ANILCA, came into law. Among other things, it added 4 million acres to Denali, tripling its size. On the new park land, some hunting was allowed. But over the years, so many restrictions were put in place that today very few, if any, native hunters actually hunt on parkland.
KIANA: Personally, my personal opinion is that it did not do shit for protecting Alaska Native hunting and fishing rights. It basically just like didn't take any more away, but it didn't like explicitly protect either.
(contemplative music begins)
SAM: Debates around hunting on the newly added lands in Denali got heated in the 90s, especially around using four-wheelers to pack out game meat.
KIANA: I think it would be a huge win to deregulate some of the four-wheeler regulations. Even though I understand why they were trying to ban it, because four-wheelers and ATVs, side-by-sides, they can be very detrimental to the environment if we're not careful.
What was the issue was the overregulation and the idea of like them telling us, “Hey, that's not your tradition.” You know, it's like, “No, you can't tell us what our traditions are or not.” And it's just like, not having trust in the local people that like, we know how to treat our land.
It's definitely kind of a statewide problem, or honestly, kind of a countrywide problem of, that idea of like, ‘Okay, natives should use their traditional ways.’ And it's like, but we've always been evolving too, like what are we supposed to go back to hunting with atlatls? We've moved on, like we aren't just stuck in 1930, or the 1830s, or whatever year you want us stuck in.
(music fades out)
SAM: In talking with Kiana, it's clear that white environmentalists' quest for the mythical “untouched wilderness” in our National Parks is still impinging on indigenous lives.
Things do seem to be changing though, if slowly. After studying the national parks for over 20 years, Mark is at least cautiously optimistic.
MARK: Secretary of the Interior is an indigenous woman, Deb Holland. Chuck Sams, who is a member of the Umatilla nation, which is in northeastern Oregon, he's the director of the National Park Service. So that is a big shift.
SAM: He says it's also important for tourists to realize that native people still use national parks too, and like Kiana said earlier, how they use those lands is evolving.
But it's also a matter of shifting how white Americans think about national parks.
KIANA: I think the biggest thing, and this is kind of what I've been trying to state working at the park, whenever I talk with like the interpretation team, or tourists, or the public, is just these parks are not untouched land.
Sure, it's not touched by like skyscrapers or oil development. But, it's just like reminding them that, one, people have been here forever, and this land has been touched forever. And those people are still here. They might not be living in the park anymore, but they're living right outside of the park. And still are involved within the park.
(hopeful music begins)
There's always been people here. Well, not always, but you know, for a really long time.
SAM: There have been incremental moves in recent years to right some of the wrongs of the U.S. national parks — be it changing the name of a mountain, or giving some land use rights back to Alaska Natives and Native Americans. But there's still a lot of work to be done to acknowledge white environmentalists' roles in establishing national parks at the expense of native peoples.
I think Mark David Spence was right: the most important word in “National Park” is “national.”
Venturing to these two national parks in different countries, with different histories, I thought I'd find two redemption stories for how to confront problematic histories.
But now I know it's not as easy as just changing a name or the facade of a building. What I learned in looking at just these two parks — and two countries that are still grappling, and will probably always continue to deal with their flawed and painful pasts — is that what we choose to preserve says a lot about what we value, and who we strive to be.
In the U.S., we have chosen to make certain pieces of land off limits to the things Native people used to do there, and only the things white people want to do (hiking, rock climbing, conquering summits) are allowed.
What this says about us is that we value white people's experiences on beautiful lands over indigenous people’s connections to that land. White recreation and ideas of environmentalism take priority.
If there's anything I've learned in Germany, it's that the work of addressing the darker moments of our pasts isn't done quickly. It's an ongoing process of reflection and thinking critically about the stories we tell ourselves, as well as actively, constantly doing better in our present. But maybe with a lot of effort and a willingness to listen, the U.S. can get there someday.
(music fades out)
In journalism, we often say we're writing the first draft of history. But the thing about history is, it has many drafts. And each generation will interpret and rewrite how they see what happened before, hopefully adding more nuance and including a more holistic set of voices as they do so.
National parks — like the nations and the people who create them — are unfinished. They are symbols of our ideals, and manifestations of what we value — what we want to protect, and what we want to project to the world.
Most importantly, we have the power to change them and what they represent. As Nico told me in Eifel National Park, nature there is in constant change, and I think our national stories are too, hopefully for the better.
(folksy guitar music begins)
WILLOW: That was Sam Baker. She’s an American journalist living in Cologne, Germany, and she hosts an environmental podcast and radio show. It’s called Living Planet, and it’s a production of Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster. If you liked Sam’s story, tune in to Out There next week for a special bonus episode, where we’ll play you one of Living Planet’s stories, and have a behind-the-scenes interview with Sam.
In the meantime, you can follow her on Twitter @srmBAKER.
(music fades out and Out There Favorites music starts)
It’s time now for Out There Favorites. This is the part of the show where we share some of our favorite resources. Favorite apps, favorite books, favorite podcasts, gear…
These are not ads — we’re not getting any money from the things we recommend. It’s just a chance for us to spread the love.
TIFFANY DUONG: Hi there! I’m Tiffany Duong, and I’m one of the ambassadors here on Out There. Today I’m sharing with you three of my favorite products.
The first is Geckobrands roll-top, waterproof backpack. This is so much more than your ordinary drybag. First of all, it’s made of something that feels more like fabric than plastic. I love that. If you’re like me, and you’re always boating or diving or on the water, you don’t want all of your stuff to get wet. This is my favorite way to make sure that my clothes or my lunch, and sometimes even my laptop or journal, stay dry.
Second, I want to share with you Stream 2 Sea’s products. This line of skin and hair protection is really amazing, because it’s not only totally safe for our environment — the ocean in particular that I am in love with — but also for human bodies. Their sunscreen was their first big product, and it is the only one that I will trust and use on the water. Their leave-in conditioner is a cult classic. If you leave salt water, or even pool water, feeling like your hair is kind of dry and ratty and lacking of moisture, this product will save you, I promise. And it smells amazing!
Last of all, I want to tell you about Silipints. These are silicon pint cups, but they also make wine glasses, shot glasses, whiskey cups, you name it. Bowls, dog bowls…
They’re in amazing tie-dye patterns and bright colors, and there’s even glow-in-the-dark! This product is my favorite thing to drink out of. I use it when I go camping, when I am on road trips, and honestly like every day at home. I love them because you can bake in them, you can cook in them, you can…they’re dishwasher safe. They’re unbreakable because they’re silicon. And they’re just so happy to look at.
WILLOW: Again, that was Tiffany Duong, one of Out There’s ambassadors.I have links to all the things she recommended in the show notes at outtherepodcast.com.
(music ends)
Coming soon on Out There, we’ll have a story about a young woman who was addicted to her phone. I think a lot of us can relate to that these days. It got so bad that it was getting in the way of her career — and her happiness.
But then, one starry night in Texas, something happened that changed everything.
ZIYI XU: When I first got out of the car, I couldn’t see anything. It was pure darkness. I couldn’t see my feet, nor my friend who was standing right next to me. I could only hear the howling wind and crickets chirping. Then I looked up..
WILLOW: Tune in on March 17 to hear that story.
(rustic music begins)
Before you go, two quick announcements.
First, as I mentioned at the top of the show, I’d love for you to come to our patrons-only happy hour on March 9. If you’re not yet a patron, you can become one by going to patreon.com/outtherepodcast, or you can just click the link in the show notes. Everyone who’s a patron as of tomorrow, March 4, will be invited!
Secondly, we are co-hosting a virtual open mic night with our friends at Kula Cloth. There will be poetry, storytelling, and more!
It’s going to be on March 31 at 5:30 p.m. Pacific Time. That’s 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
It’s free to attend, and it’s online, so you can join from wherever you are in the world. Just grab a beverage and a snack, curl up on your couch, and prepare to be entertained and enchanted.
To save your seat, go to outtherepodcast.com/openmic. And I have a link to that in the show notes as well.
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If you’re a skier, chances are you want some info about a mountain before you go there.
Maybe you want to know what the ski runs are like. Or you want to know the status of the various lifts. Or opening and closing times.
If that kind of info sounds helpful to you, check out an app called PeakVisor.
PeakVisor is one of our sponsors. Their app helps you plan out your adventures by giving you detailed 3D maps of mountains all over the world. You can see ski runs and lifts, plus real-time info for almost all ski resorts in the U.S.
Check out PeakVisor in the app store. You just might love it.
(Out There theme music begins)
If you’re new to Out There, check out the Best of Out There playlist. This is a collection of some of our favorite episodes of all time — and it’s a great introduction to the range of stories we do on the show. You can find Best of Out There on Spotify, and at our website outtherepodcast.com.
Today’s story was reported and written by Sam Baker. Editing and sound design by me, Willow Belden. Out There’s advertising manager is Jessica Taylor. Our audience growth director is Sheeba Joseph. Cara Schaefer is our print content coordinator. Our ambassadors are Tiffany Duong, Ashley White, and Stacia Bennet. And our theme music was written by Jared Arnold.
Have a beautiful day, and we’ll see you soon.
(theme music ends on a last whistling note)
